by Ralph Cotton
Summers, Webb and Teasdale looked at one another as if all three were asking themselves the same question. Then Summers turned to Monk Dupre and asked, “How far are we from their hideout?”
“It’s thirty miles, give or take,” said Dupre flatly. “It’s easier to show how to get there than it is to try and give directions.”
“Don’t worry, Dupre. We’re keeping with you the whole trip,” said Summers. “Just make sure what you tell us comes up right.” He turned back to Teasdale and Webb with a determined expression as Dahl slipped down from his saddle and joined them. “I hate passing up the opportunity to chop them down in the street,” said Summers.
“It can’t be helped,” said Webb. “We’re about out of ammunition for the Gatling gun. Without it, the four of us don’t stand a chance.”
“I know,” said Summers. “We might just as well put it out of our minds for now. We need to get ahead of them and be waiting at their hideout. We’re outnumbered. But a good four-rifle ambush can cut them to pieces before they know what hit them, especially if we catch them by surprise coming into their own front yard.”
“Then we need to push on,” said Teasdale.
“I can’t go any farther right now,” said Dahl. “That horse I’m riding is ready to drop in his tracks. I’ve got to either rest him or kill him.”
“All our horses are in the same shape, schoolmaster,” said Summers. “The best thing we can do is make a dark camp here, rest these horses and ourselves and head out tonight around midnight. The Peltrys aren’t going to break up their party any time soon.” He looked from one man to the next for their agreement. Webb, Teasdale and Dahl nodded.
“I’ll take the first two-hour watch,” said Dahl. He led his horse over beside the horse carrying the Gatling gun and tied its reins around an upthrust of rock.
By the time the last glow of light sank down below the horizon, the men sat eating cold jerky that Abner Webb had taken from his saddlebags and passed around. They ate the dry, stiff meat in silence, washing it down with tepid water from their canteens. With his hands still tied, Monk Dupre looked from one grim, shadowed face to the next as he pried a sliver of jerky from between his thumbnail and spit it away. “I know it’s not my place to mention this,” he said in a lowered voice. “Has it crossed any of your minds that maybe it’s time to break off here and head back to Rileyville? I mean, nobody can say you men didn’t give it your all. But the odds against you taking down the Peltry Gang was slim to begin with, and it’s only gotten slimmer since then.”
Silence loomed until Monk Dupre felt himself grow uneasy. “Not that I can’t agree you’ve got every right to stay here and fight it out after all that’s—”
“Keep your mouth shut, Dupre,” Summers hissed. He stood up, dusted the seat of his trousers and turned to Sherman Dahl. “Wake me up in two hours, schoolmaster. I’ll take the next watch.”
But in the darkness of night, when the two hours had passed, it was not Sherman Dahl who awakened Will Summers. Instead, it was the cold edge of steel pressed against the side of his throat that caused Summers to open his eyes as his hand reached instinctively for the pistol lying beneath his saddle.
“No, no, señor,” said Sergeant Hervisu’s gravely voice. His rough boot clamped down on Will Summers’ wrist and pinned it to the ground. A lantern glowed in Hervisu’s hand, revealing the shadowy forms of numerous Federales standing over Abner Webb, Lawrence Teasdale and Monk Dupre with their rifles pointed down in their faces. Beside Sergeant Hervisu stood a young soldier with his rifle cocked and pointed at Will Summers.
“It is over for all of you now,” Hervisu said to Will Summers. “For the sake of your friends there, do not attempt something foolish.”
“I won’t,” said Will Summers, easing down a bit, looking around in the flickering light of the lantern. “We’ve had our play. Looks like you’ve won.”
“You are wise to see it that way,” said Hervisu. With his boot still on Summers’ wrist, he gestured for the Federale beside him to reach down and get the pistol from beneath Will Summers’ saddle. When the young man stood up and handed Sergeant Hervisu the holstered pistol, Hervisu looked at it and draped the gunbelt over his shoulder. Then he took a step back from Summers and looked all around in the darkness.
“We’re not outlaws,” said Will Summers, “If that’s what you’re thinking.”
Sergeant Hervisu tipped his chin up and patted his hand on the gunbelt on his shoulder. “I am thinking that you are not gunfighters either.” A trickle of laughter spilled from his men, and he added, “We have taken all of you without firing a shot.”
Summers ignored the insult. “We’re a legally sworn posse trailing the Peltry Gang. We didn’t come here to break any laws of Mexico.”
Sergeant Hervisu offered a knowing smile and wagged a thick finger back and forth. “But you break the law simply by coming here in the first place. You Americanos always think it is your border. Why do you never stop and realize that it is our border too?”
“You can bet I’ll remember that in the future,” said Will Summers. He tried raising himself up, but the boot held his wrist to the ground.
“It is best you speak no more unless you are first spoken to, señor.” Sergeant Hervisu looked around again, then said to Summers and the others, “Now then, señores…where is the machine rifle? My capitán says I must bring it to him right away. He does not like to be kept waiting.”
In the flickering light, Webb’s, Teasdale’s and Summers’ eyes met, each man taken aback by the realization that both the Gatling gun and Sherman Dahl were missing. Thinking quickly, Will Summers said, “We don’t have it. We thought you did.”
Sergeant Hervisu quickly turned the tip of his saber toward Monk Dupre. “You…you are a prisoner here, sí?”
“Yes, I am,” said Dupre. “But I don’t know why. I haven’t done anything to—”
Hervisu cut him off. “Where is the gun? If you lie to me, I will open your belly here and now.” The tip of his saber came to rest at the center of Dupre’s rib cage. Dupre looked down at it, his eyes bulging in fear. Yet he sensed that his best chance at staying alive was to stick with the possemen’s story, knowing that somewhere in the shadows surrounding them, the Gatling gun could be poised, ready to fire at any second.
“I—I haven’t seen any Gatling gun,” Dupre said, “and that’s a fact, so help me God! I was an innocent hostage of the Peltry Gang before these men captured me. They had a Gatling gun when the fight started the other night in the river valley, but that’s the last I saw of it.”
Sergeant Hervisu stared at him coldly for a moment as if having difficulty making up his mind. Then he said, “If I find you have lied to me, I will quarter you limb from limb like a roasting animal.” He spun to the Federale who had his rifle aimed at Will Summers. “Get them to their feet and chain them together. By morning we will be in Punta Del Sol. We’ll see what Capitán Oberiske wants to do with them.”
In the wispy gray predawn air, Punta Del Sol slept in its own sour smell like a diseased animal. The cantina was the sore at the center of its disease. Within the ragged walls behind the broken windows and doors, the light of one thin candle glowed amid the low drunken babble of the last two men standing at the battered bar. One of the whores lay sprawled facedown on the bar top between Flat Face Chinn and Handy Phelps. Flat Face stood naked from the waist down save for his gunbelt and a long knife shoved down behind it. He picked the whore’s head up by her hair and said drunkenly, “Wake up…this dance ain’t ended yet.”
“Turn her loose, Chinn,” Handy Phelps demanded. “Can’t you see she’s bleeding all over hell?”
Chinn saw blood on the bar from where she’d passed out earlier with a shot glass raised to her lips. “Damn, what a mess,” said Chinn. He turned loose of her hair. Her head bounced on the bar. She let out a short groan, then lay still. “I don’t know about you,” Chinn said in a slurred voice, looking down and kicking a broken guitar out of his way with his bare foot, “but
I could eat something hot and greasy…get my guts working again.”
“We et up everything in town last night,” said Phelps. The two weaved back and forth in place, looking across the floor at the half-naked whores and outlaws whose bodies lay entwined in twisted blankets, broken furniture, torn clothing and empty bottles.
“What happened to that spotted hound that kept licking and sniffing around here last night?” asked Chinn.
“I don’t know,” said Phelps, “but I don’t eat dog except in a pinch.”
“Me neither, I reckon,” Chinn resolved, reaching for a half-full bottle of tequila someone had left standing on the bar. He took a long, gurgling drink and passed the remains on to Handy Phelps. As Phelps turned up a long drink, three young Federales slipped inside the cantina and stepped silently over the sleeping bodies on the floor. They spread out, listening to the drunken conversation between the two outlaws.
“Sante Madre,” whispered one of the Federales under his breath, looking all around. The body of the cantina owner hung upside down at the end of a rope someone had thrown over a ceiling timber. Looking at the dead, blank eyes, the young Mexican soldier made the sign of the cross, then raised his rifle to his shoulder.
“Every one of you, wake up and raise your hands!” the young soldier shouted. “We have this place surrounded!” Behind him, four more Federales stepped through the open door and spread out among the sleeping men on the littered floor. On the floor, a few men moaned and cursed in their sleep, but none awakened.
“Now, what the hell is this?” Chinn demanded in his drunken voice.
“It’s a swarm of bugs,” said Handy Phelps. “Mexican hopping bugs!” He lowered the bottle from his lips and let tequila run down his scraggly beard. “Lord God, I’m never eating no cactus buttons ever again. I swear it!”
“You two, raise your hands quickly!” said the young Mexican, he and the others swinging their rifles toward the strange-looking pair. Beside the naked Flat Face Chinn, Handy Phelps stood missing a boot and his hat. Sometime in the night, a whore had pulled one of her garters down around his forehead.
“Why?” Phelps asked the young soldier bluntly, a look of defiance in his bloodshot eyes. “You bunch of kids ain’t going to shoot nobody.”
“That’s right,” said Chinn, thrusting his nakedness forward. “You boys want to see something, come take a look at this.”
The young Federale looked away, stunned for a second. His face reddened in embarrassment. He nodded at the pair of dirty denim trousers hanging from the bar. “Put on your bitches, señor, right now!”
“Ha!” said Flat Face Chinn. “I ain’t got a damn thing I’m ashamed of!”
“Careful, Flat Face, these bugs ain’t kidding,” Handy Phelps laughed.
“Hell, neither am I,” Flat Face Chinn bellowed, a weird, crazed look coming to his eyes. He reached down and shook himself at the shocked young Mexicans. “I said get over here and take a look at this!” he raged, his free hand grabbing the butt of his pistol.
Across the street, atop the steep trail in Juan Richards’ hacienda, the volley of rifle fire from the cantina caused Moses Peltry to awaken from a mescal-and-peyote-induced stupor. He batted his blurry eyes and tried to focus on something long enough to stop the room from spinning. “Hey, Moses, wake up,” said Cherokee Rhodes with a dark chuckle, poking a pistol barrel into Moses’ chest. “If you sleep late today, you’re going to miss an awful lot.”
“Get that damn pistol out of my face,” Moses demanded, swatting the pistol barrel away as if it were a fly. On his right, a young whore lay naked against him, her arm thrown across his chest, his beard wrapped around her forearm like a furry white snake. Moses unwrapped his beard, shoved the woman away and sat up. He wiped his face with both hands and kept his head bowed as he asked, “What the hell was that rifle fire about?”
Cherokee Rhodes looked around at Captain Oberiske with a flat smile. The German officer stood rigidly with his gloved hands on his hips, a riding quirt hanging down his thigh. “I told you that peyote would knock their heads off,” Rhodes said. Then he looked back at Moses Peltry. “What you heard was Mexican soldiers shooting the hell out of your men, Moses. You best wake up and pay attention here before life decides to pass you by.”
Moses sat slumped for a moment longer, his long beard piled in a random coil in his lap, his forehead in his hands. He struggled, trying to make sense of what Rhodes had said. Finally he raised his face slowly and stared once again into the barrel of Cherokee Rhodes’ pistol. “If you shove my pistol away this time,” said Rhodes, “I’ll have to shoot you just to keep from looking weak in front of my friend here.”
“Rhodes, you rotten sonsabitch,” Moses hissed. “You’ve sold us out. You came to me looking for work, and all the time you was setting us up for the law!”
“There you are,” said Rhodes. “I couldn’t have said it any plainer myself.”
“So you was out to try and kill me after all,” Moses growled.
“No.” Rhodes wagged his pistol barrel back and forth. “But when Will Summers and his posse came to buy guns, and I later heard he was hunting your gang for bounty, damn if it didn’t sound like a good idea!” He tapped the pistol barrel to his head, then leveled it back at Moses Peltry. “It was only after him and his posse killed all the gunrunners that I decided I would help hunt you down. Then I ran into the captain here and explained my intentions, and, well, you know how one thing always leads to another, eh?” He chuckled under his breath. “We’ve got all your men disarmed and in custody. Captain Oberiske here wants you to hand him over that Gatling gun. I told him you’d more than likely be glad to. Don’t disappoint me now.”
Moses Peltry shook his head, wincing against the sharp hangover pain in his temples. “I’ve got to disappoint you, Rhodes,” he said, lowering his head again. “I ain’t got it. We lost it the other night near the river valley.”
Captain Oberiske stepped forward impatiently, reached out with the tip of the riding quirt and raised Moses’ eyes to his. “Do not waste my time, outlaw! I want the truth, nothing less! We gathered many boxes of ammunition from the spot where your wagon crashed. Now, I must have the gun.”
Moses batted his blurry eyes, glancing past the German captain and seeing the armed soldiers gathered inside the door. He saw Juan Richards in his wheelchair behind the captain. Richards’ face bore a strange, grim expression. Dark circles lined his sunken, hate-filled eyes. “Let me question him for you, Captain Oberiske,” Richards whispered, his voice deadly calm. “I’ll make this pig tell the truth. I owe him and his brother both for what they’ve done to me, to my home, to this town.”
“Why don’t you crawl off somewhere and die, you crippled, legless old poltroon!” Moses snarled. He looked back at Captain Oberiske and asked, “Where the hell is my brother?”
“He’s chained up and under heavy guard in the old Spanish mission at the edge of town,” said Oberiske. “Both he and the leader of the scalp hunters. You will be going there yourself. As soon as I find out who has the machine rifle, I will accompany the lot of you to the border and set you free. You can make it hard on yourself or easy. Either way, my only interest is the gun.” He turned, slapping the quirt impatiently against his thigh, and summoned the Federales who stood at the door with their rifles pointed at Moses. “Quickly, take him out of my sight.”
“What about me?” asked Juan Richards. “Can’t I cut some meat off him…make up some for what they’ve done to me?”
“Perhaps later,” said Captain Oberiske, appearing to have dismissed the matter. “Right now I am waiting for all parties to stand on the same spot and tell me about the Gatling gun.”
“I already told you. I don’t know where it’s at,” said Moses Peltry as the Federales lifted him to his feet and dragged him toward the door.
“Of course you did,” said Oberiske. “But now I am curious to see what you will say when I stand your men one at a time in front of a firing squad.”
“Whoa! A firing squad!” said Cherokee Rhodes, beaming with a wide smile. “Hear that, Moses? They’re going to kill you and your idiot brother just like you were real soldiers! You ought to be proud as a painted peacock.” He turned, laughing, and grabbed Juan Richards’ wheelchair with both hands. “Come on, crip. You’re not going to want to miss any of this.”
Rhodes rolled Juan Richards out behind the Federales, hurrying to keep up with them. Moses Peltry spit over his shoulder at him, saying, “You better hope to God I never get loose long enough to get my hands around your throat, you jackpotting sonsabitch!”
Cherokee Rhodes laughed, taunting Moses. “I don’t know what’s wrong with all these fools, crip,” he said to Juan Richards. “They all know what a low, back-shooting weasel I am, yet they still keep inviting me along.” Juan Richards only stared grimly ahead in silence, his eyes livid in his rage and riveted to Moses Peltry’s naked back.
On their way along the dirt street toward the old Spanish mission, Cherokee Rhodes spotted Sergeant Hervisu and his patrol riding in from the east ahead of a long, glowing shaft of morning sunlight. “Well I’ll be double dog damned,” said Rhodes. “Looks like the Summers-Webb posse is still alive and kicking…just not nearly as high as it was before.” He veered Juan Richards’ rickety wheelchair toward the oncoming patrol. “Stick with me, Juan. You’re going to meet all kinds of new faces today.”
Trudging along on foot in front of the Hervisu patrol, Will Summers said to Abner Webb and Lawrence Teasdale in a lowered voice, “Of all people, look who made it through alive.” With four feet of chain connecting the three men by their wrists, Summers lagged long enough to let Webb and Teasdale close ranks at his back.
“I’d love to hear how he’s managed to stay alive,” Webb whispered near Summers’ ear.
“Can’t blame Cherokee Rhodes for going with what’s no more than his nature,” said Summers.
“Yeah, at least we should have expected it from him,” said Abner Webb. “What should we have expected from Sherman Dahl, sneaking out on us the way he did?”
